by Hal Borland
Reading tracks in the snow calls for your detective skills, but it really is something like reading history—you are trying to piece together, from the evidence, who were there and what they did, perhaps why they did it. It all happened before you got there. But there are ways to see the animals themselves and watch them in action. I have two methods, both of which call for patience. One may be called the Still Wait.
The Still Wait is most likely to be successful at dawn. I get up at least half an hour before daylight and go to a chosen spot in the edge of the woods. I have several such stands—three on the mountainside, two at the edge of the pasture, two on the riverbank. None of them has special blinds or hiding places. This type of nature watching requires no concealment. The only necessities are that one get there early and remain quiet. The best time is from the first streak of dawn till full daylight. By the time the sun is fully up the best possibilities usually are over.
For such a wait I dress comfortably and, if the weather is chill, take an extra jacket for warmth. I prefer dull-colored clothing, preferably browns or greens, but I have had success wearing a light tan windbreaker, old blue dungarees, and a red cap. The degree of color is more important than the color itself, since nearly all animals lack color vision. The world they see is all blacks and whites and grays, like the world recorded on black-and-white camera film.
I have found that chances for success are best when it is misty or foggy. Even a light drizzle helps, though it makes uncomfortable waiting for the watcher. I don’t know whether the animals get a sense of safety and concealment in fog and mist, but I do know that the dampness helps muffle the crack and rustle of any normally awkward human being’s passage through brush and woodland.
Early one morning I went to a stand in the thin brush at the edge of the pasture just as the birds in the tall trees were starting their pre-daylight songs. All Spring and well into Summer the songbirds make a loud celebration in that last dim half hour before sunrise. Then they fall silent for a time, only to resume their chorus in even greater volume when the sun actually rises.
When I took my stand—it actually was a seat on an old stump—a blue jay squawked at me, indignant at being roused, and two song sparrows twittered questioningly and a chickadee somewhere nearby chick-chick-chicked at me, then said Chickadee-dee-dee and was silent. The treetop birds sang, two crows down the valley cawed, and slowly the light increased. The chickadee returned and perched on a twig within three feet of me and twittered as though talking to itself. A catbird came from somewhere and said Nyaa, Nyaa and peered at me. A fox sparrow glided down into the dead leaves at my feet and began to scratch for breakfast, busy as a mother hen in the barnyard.
I had hoped to see deer, but none came. Instead, a cottontail appeared from the underbrush, flopped its ears, scratched its nose with a long hind foot, and stared at me. It nibbled at a tuft of grass and stared again, jaw waggling, nose twitching, as though wondering if that big stump in dungarees was there yesterday. It blinked at me and hopped over and sniffed the toe of my boot, nosed the cuff of my dungarees, then turned and hopped off a little way. It came back, nosed my boot again, tasted a violet leaf and spat it out, seemingly undecided whether to be suspicious or not. Then it went away, the fox sparrow came back, and the chickadee perched on my shoulder and whistled twice and flew off. A white-foot mouse appeared at a seedling maple only a foot high, stood on its hind legs, revealing its snow-white belly, and sniffed the air. The mouse had no interest in me.
Still no deer came. But suddenly a red fox was standing there, not ten feet from me. I don’t know where he came from. I didn’t see him come. He was simply there, his tail a plume, snow-tipped, his red fur almost frosty with mist, one forefoot lifted, both ears alert, black nose wriggling to catch my scent. Some shift in the air currents must have taken my scent to him, for he hunched slightly, then leaped over the nearest bush and was gone, as silently as he had come, without even the whisper of a leaf.
The birds in the treetops were silent. A touch of a breeze shook down a light rain of the night’s mist from the leaves overhead. It pattered around me. Then the first rays of the sun struck the hillside and the birds sang again, a great chorus, a veritable hallelujah to sunrise. The new day had begun. The mists shimmered and swirled above the pasture, smokelike. My Still Wait was over. No deer would come now. But I had seen a fox, had looked him in the eye and seen the way his nose wriggled and the way the night mist frosted his nut-red fur.
Another time when I took a dawn stand in the brush at the edge of the pasture a fox walked out of the woods not fifteen feet away and for fifteen minutes showed me how a fox hunts mice in the meadow grass. He caught two mice before a shift in the air took my scent to him. Then he vanished like a shadow.
And one dawn I watched a doe come down to a clearing in the woods with her two fawns, still in their dappled coats. She grazed for ten minutes within fifteen yards of me, and the fawns played like lambs, butted their mother, nosed the grass, still too young to eat it. One of them took a few sucks at the mother’s dugs, but obviously wasn’t hungry. She walked away and left it. Then she caught my human scent, stiffened, snorted, and stamped her forefeet. The snort was a hoarse, coughing sound almost like the bark of a gray fox. It was the alarm signal, and the fawns didn’t wait to ask questions. They leaped for cover and were gone into the brush. The doe stood there, defiant, till they were out of sight. Then she snorted again and was off, graceful as a swallow.
If you try the Still Wait there will be times when the birds jeer at you and even the rabbits will stay away. But even those times will not be wasted. You will have been in the open to watch the new day come. You will have been well repaid.
My other method of watching animals in action requires somewhat less patience but even more discretion. It is a harmless kind of jack-lighting which happens to be illegal in some states. If it is frowned on by the law in your state, skip the rest of this chapter. In any case, find out before you try it, or you may be arrested. It happens to be legal in my state, so I take a powerful flashlight and go out into my pasture in the full darkness of late evening. Sometimes I sit and wait in the darkness, sometimes I walk slowly and quietly, swinging the light here and there until it picks up the glow of reflected eyes. Once I see that gleam, I can spotlight the animal.
Animals that hunt or feed at night have eyes specially adapted to night vision. Inside their eyeballs is a reflective layer that traps light and sends it through the visual area a second time, thus multiplying the acuity of night vision. This “reflector” in the eyeballs creates the eye-shine when a strong light strikes the animal’s eyes at night. Now and then I read about someone seeing an animal’s eyes “gleaming like coals” in total darkness. This is sheer poppycock. No animal’s eyes gleam except by reflecting a strong light.
In my home pasture, within a few hundred yards of the house, I have in this way watched skunks, opossums, foxes, raccoons, deer. I seldom see a rabbit. I don’t know why. Now and then I see a wolf spider, the only spider I know with reflective eyes. This spider’s eyes under the light look like two pinhead-size rubies in the grass.
Most of the animal eyes glow some shade of red, though there is quite a variation. The opossum’s eyes often look orange or orange-red. The skunk’s eyes sometimes glow amber, but I have never seen an annoyed or disturbed skunk whose eyes were not fiery red. Deer eyes are definitely red, though I have heard men say they have seen them green. I never have. A raccoon’s eyes are clean, clear red.
I understand that an African lion’s eyes reflect a golden yellow color, that those of a zebra show silver, and that an alligator’s eyes look pinkish-orange under the light. And I have been told that a timber wolfs eyes reflect silvery green. I have never had the chance to prove this, but I know that my own dog’s eyes usually gleam a silvery turquoise blue. When he is angry or excited, though, my dog’s eyes reflect a distinct reddish color. I suspect that there may be a similar change in the eye-reflection of other animals. I noted, jus
t above, the change in a skunk’s eyes. Perhaps my friends who say they have seen deer’s eyes reflect green were reporting such a phenomenon.
One night, returning home late in the car, I saw two fiery red eyes in the road just beyond my garage. They were a foot and a half apart, and I wondered what huge beast was standing there, head down and ready to charge. I eased the car toward the eyes, wary. And finally saw, not a huge animal, but two birds! Two whippoorwills were sitting in the road, facing each other. My car’s lights were reflected from one eye of each bird. I was quite sure, from their markings, that they were whippoorwills; then they flew into a nearby tree and began to call, and there was no mistaking them. That is the only time I ever saw the eye-shine of a whippoorwill, but I know that most night birds have reflective eyes. I once spotlighted a screech owl, and its eyes were a bright ruby red, even redder than those of the whippoorwills.
The only way most people will ever see flying squirrels, except as pets in a cage, is by night-lighting them, and even then it probably will be an accident unless one knows a hollow tree where a pair of these shy little nocturnal animals is nesting. Or unless one maintains a bird feeder on a window sill and stocks it with nutmeats and lives near a woodland. Flying squirrels often visit such feeding stations at night and can be watched from indoors with the illumination from a flashlight.
The flying squirrel is about the size of the common red squirrel but is olive-brown above and white below and, like all nocturnal animals, has large, prominent eyes. Flying squirrels don’t really fly; they glide on loose folds of skin along the sides from wrist to ankle, which can be stretched taut into air foils. If they launch themselves from a tall tree, they can glide well over a hundred feet. They live in hollows in trees, often in old woodpecker holes. Sometimes they invade attics, but when they do they are usually better tenants than either red or gray squirrels, though they do scurry about at night. In the woods, if you find a dead tree with a number of woodpecker holes in it, you may provoke a flying squirrel to rouse and poke out an inquisitive head by knocking on the tree.
In thin woods at night, if you see a shadow that seems to glide from a treetop into your spotlight’s beam and through it, you may very well have had a glimpse of a flying squirrel. If you are quick enough you may be able to follow it with the light and watch it for a few minutes as it scurries about on the ground. The flying squirrel’s big eyes are reflective and show red in the light. If you find a tree with a nest of them you can spend an hour watching the squirrels come and go in the light, quite unperturbed by it.
There are two hazards to watching animals by spotlight. One involves skunks, which usually do not mind the light but now and then resent it. One night I spotted a skunk in a bad mood and not ten feet from me. It was as startled as I was, and a startled skunk immediately assumes a posture of defense. I backed slowly away, keeping the light on the skunk, and I escaped unhappy consequences. When you catch a skunk in the light, use caution, especially at close quarters. Avoid quick or noisy motions. Keep the light on the skunk. It may baffle and partially blind him, and it enables you to see where he is and what he is doing. A skunk can send a jet of spray ten or twelve feet, even farther if the wind is right. And skunks have a habit of shooting first, without waiting to see who is friend and who is foe. Especially at night.
The other hazard is the law, even in states where such harmless spotlighting is legal. State troopers, game wardens, and most farmers are suspicious of all prowlers with flashlights, especially in deer country. Poachers often kill deer with the use of jack-lights, which blind the deer long enough for the poacher to get two or three shots. Killing deer by the use of spotlights is illegal and punishable by heavy fines in most states.
Even if you plan to do harmless jack-light watching on your own land it is wise to tell your neighbors, the game warden, and the state troopers what you are up to. Otherwise you may find yourself surrounded by a posse. The legal authorities in my area know that I am often out in my own pastures with a powerful flashlight, and my neighbors are tolerant of my strange behavior, but last year a state trooper newly assigned to this area caught me red-handed one dark night. Or thought he did. Actually, we were both embarrassed until I proved my identity and told him what I was doing. Then he spent ten minutes watching a skunk with me. We have been friends ever since.
Chapter 9
A Badeling of Birds
Someday someone will write a usable book on how to look for birds, a book that will tell where and when to watch for each species. Until such a book appears, perhaps some of the hints in this chapter about habits and habitats will be of help.
ACCORDING TO AN ESTIMATE by Richard H. Pough, the conservationist, between twelve and fifteen billion birds regularly spend at least part of each year in the United States and Canada. This is almost 2,000 birds to the square mile, three birds to the acre. To a countryman this figure seems low. Mathematically, we would be entitled to only 300 birds on our hundred acres, and I am sure I hear twice that many within a hundred yards of my house any May morning.
The human population of this country averages only about fifty to the square mile, so there apparently are about forty times as many birds as people. Again this figure seems low, at least in the country. But here, of course, there are fewer people than the national average per square mile, and more birds than average. However you look at it, though, there are many birds and they are distributed over all parts of the country. This is a fortunate circumstance from any viewpoint, for besides being beautiful to look at and wonderful to listen to, birds are the best natural control of insects that we have. Even from a cold-blooded economic viewpoint, birds are a tremendously valuable asset.
Birds live almost everywhere on earth, certainly wherever there is food enough to sustain them. Penguins thrive in the Antarctic, waterfowl by the millions nest each year in the Arctic, ravens live in the furnace heat of Death Valley, horned larks and road runners thrive in the Southwestern deserts, condors live in the highest Andes. And the temperate regions of the United States have a great wealth of birds, some 1,200 species and subspecies.
The latest list of bird species state by state that I can find was published in 1936 and now may be quite out of date, but I doubt that the relative standings have much changed. On that list Texas stands first with 546 species and California second with 541. Both are big states with a wide variety of bird habitats. But number three is Nebraska, an inland state with no shore birds but still recording 418 species. New York, with 412 species, stands fourth. Then comes another surprise, Colorado, with 403. After that, in order, come Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Washington, with Arizona, the biggest surprise of all to me, tenth. Massachusetts stands eleventh. And my own state, Connecticut, is number sixteen on the list. Last of all is Idaho, with 210 species.
These figures are for the states as a whole. But even the major cities have a surprising quota of birds. John Kieran notes that more than 230 species have been recorded in New York City’s Central Park, and he says that any observant person can see at least 200 species somewhere in the city in almost any year.
The bird watcher, no matter where he lives, certainly has no lack of birds to watch. All he needs is a good bird handbook, a pair of binoculars, and an interest in birds. If he has a friend who knows birds he is specially fortunate. That friend can give help and guidance. But even a person who doesn’t know where to start can find help in any local or national conservation or ornithological group. For that matter, many able amateur ornithologists started with only the help of a handbook. Once started, the beginner will find bird watchers in almost every group he meets.
I live in a rural area and a good many of my friends are able amateurs and a few are professionals, but I didn’t know how many bird watchers were around until a few Winters ago. I had gone to a crossroads garage to have my car serviced and half a dozen men were there, loafing and talking, a farmer, a storekeeper, a couple of retired teachers, a stone mason. I joined them and found that they were discussing bi
rds. All were amateurs, but they knew their birds. They swapped news and opinions about redpolls, red-breasted nuthatches, grackles, mourning doves, kinglets, cardinals, juncos. Finally a gasoline tank truck drove up and the driver came in and announced that he had just seen a pair of snow geese down on the river road. He, too, knew his birds.
Spring is the ideal time to start learning to recognize birds. The Winter species are relatively few in number and not too difficult to identify. And the early migrations bring only a few species at a time. Use a good handbook with illustrations that emphasize the identification points, size, markings, shape of beak, etc. Equip yourself with adequate binoculars. I prefer the size called “7 x 35,” which gives ample magnification for general use, and I insist on coated lenses, which give far more light and clarity than uncoated ones. Such binoculars are moderately priced and will serve you for many years. Cheap binoculars strain the eyes, distort the vision, and aren’t really worth whatever they cost. But it isn’t necessary to buy the most expensive binoculars in the showcase, either. Ask the advice of an experienced bird watcher about which to buy, or go to a thoroughly reliable dealer. Preferably, do both.